In the fall of 2012, community members expressed concern with the amount of young people being incarcerated for non-violent offenses. Our research showed that children in Charleston County were being arrested and incarcerated at higher rates than other counties in South Carolina and that most were being arrested for minor offenses. We also found that youth put into jail for minor offenses are more likely to drop out of school and become trapped in the criminal justice system.
In April 2013, 1,500 CAJM representatives gathered and gained commitments from a cross-section of law enforcement officials to reduce youth incarceration by implementing a Risk Assessment Instrument (RAI), which objectively determines whether to release the juvenile to a parent to await their court date, or put the juvenile in jail. The RAI was implemented in four law enforcement departments (Mount Pleasant PD, Charleston PD, North Charleston PD and the Sheriff’s Office) in January 2014. CAJM continued to review the collected data every six months to identify improvements and any potential areas of concern.
Through this review process, CAJM noticed that over fifty percent of arrests were coming directly from schools. The organization then voted to continue working on this issue through tackling School-Based Arrests.